Mason jar salads can be as easy as putting your favorite vegetables, lettuce, toppings and dressing in a jar.

These pretty lunches require just a little planning as you make them. Start with your salad dressing, liquids or watery vegetables, like tomatoes or cucumbers, on the bottom of the jar, then hard chunky vegetables and any protein. Add leafy greens to fill and top with any crunchy or dry items. Refrigerate until you’re ready to eat. Dump it into a bowl or shake it up and eat it from the jar. Choose a wide-mouth jar to make it easier to fill and eat. By layering, your dry ingredients will stay dry and your lettuce won’t wilt.

There are many recipes online for inspiration. Some are takes on traditional salads. This recipe is inspired by a restaurant-style burrito bowl, but with quinoa added to help fill you up until dinner, and Greek yogurt instead of sour cream.

Karla Arrigoni, a registered dietitian at Marshfield Clinic, likes the idea of adding beans to this recipe to increase fiber.

With a little bit of prep, you can have a week’s worth of delicious salads lined up in your refrigerator. They might be almost too pretty to eat, but they also are too delicious to turn down.

Print burrito bowl recipe

 

Burrito Bowl Mason Jar Salads

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Servings: 5 salads

Serving Size: 1 pint-sized Mason jar salad

Ingredients

For the quinoa:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water
• Juice and zest of one lime or 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

For the chicken:

• 2 large chicken breasts
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• Cooking spray

For the sweet potatoes:

• 1 large sweet potato, washed, with both ends cut off
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Other ingredients:

• 3 cups chopped lettuce
• 5 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
• 3/4 cup shredded cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Instructions

For the quinoa:

Add quinoa and water to a medium-sized pot. Bring to a boil over medium heat. When it has reached a boil, cover and cook for 20-25 minutes or until quinoa is soft and fluffy. Set the quinoa aside to cool. When it has cooled, add the lime juice, lime zest and 1/4 cup chopped cilantro to the rice and stir to evenly distribute ingredients. Taste and add more lime or cilantro as needed.

For the chicken:

Dry off both chicken breasts thoroughly with paper towels, and season both sides of each breast using salt. Use cooking spray on a large skillet, and heat over medium-high heat until the pan is very hot. Add chicken breasts to the hot skillet and cook for about 4 minutes on each side. Both sides should have a pretty brown sear to them. When chicken breasts are cooked all the way through, remove them to a cutting board to cool. Once cooled, cut chicken into small chunks, about 1/2 square inch each.

For the sweet potatoes:

Cut sweet potato into tiny chunks, about 1/2 square inch each. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in your large skillet over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add sweet potato cubes. Sear potatoes on all sides, stirring every 3-5 minutes. When potatoes have all browned on the outside, turn the heat down to medium-low, cover the skillet with a lid, and cook sweet potatoes until they can be easily pierced with a fork. Set aside to cool.

To assemble salads:

When all ingredients have cooled, begin to assemble your burrito bowl salads. Add 1 tablespoon plain Greek yogurt to the bottom of each pint-sized wide-mouth Mason jar. Top with about 2 tablespoons of sweet potato cubes. On top of the sweet potatoes, add 3-4 tablespoons of the cilantro lime quinoa. Layer 1-2 tablespoons of cheese over the quinoa and a layer of chicken. (To make this vegetarian and increase fiber, substitute 1 can of rinsed beans for the chicken and add a layer of beans here.)

Fill the remaining space in the Mason jar with lettuce and sprinkle additional chopped cilantro on top before screwing on the lid.

Nutrition information

Each serving contains about 307 calories; 11 g fat; 32 g carbohydrates; 21 g protein; 503 mg sodium; 2 g sugar.

Source: www.strictlydelicious.com

Print burrito bowl recipe